Sightings Articles
Farewell, President — Martin E. Marty
Tomorrow, they tell us, is an epochal day in America and on the world-scene, so we'll choose to be reflective about some of its meanings. The dictionary says that sighting is "the act of catching sight of something, especially something unusual or...
January 19, 2009
Sex and Seminaries — Martin E. Marty
Did you know that there is a Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice and Healing? Last Thursday, January 8, the Institute, together with Union Theological Seminary in New York, issued a fifty-two page report, which is a call for North Americ...
January 12, 2009
Non-negotiables — Martin E. Marty
Long-time subscribers know that Monday Sightings does not "do" U.S. Presidents or presidential candidates, but this twilight moment after an election and before an inauguration provides me with another category, "President-Elect," which today's colum...
January 5, 2009
On Trust — Martin E. Marty
For the next fortnight the University of Chicago and the Martin Marty Center close down; so, while I rarely visit either of them except electronically, I'll close down, to return in 2009. This end-of-year and holiday-greeting issue differs from the ...
December 22, 2008
The Mimetic Principle — Martin E. Marty
"The mimetic principle," most developed by René Girard, today captures the attention of psychologists, literary critics, war-and-peace makers, and experts in many disciplines. It builds on the desires and behavior of humans who see something they and...
December 15, 2008
Catholic Creativity — Martin E. Marty
With Catholics, Catholicism, Roman Catholics, the Church, and the Catholic bloc having played ill-defined and indeterminate roles in the November election, the one-fourth of the American population that they make up is ripe for assessment. A brillia...
December 8, 2008
Opinions on the Financial Crisis — Martin E. Marty
Last week we sighted post-election themes in the conservative religious magazine World. This week, we do the same in a liberal opinion journal, the doughty and durable Sojourners (December). Its focus is less on the aftermath of the election and more...
December 1, 2008
Politics and Inerrancy — Martin E. Marty
"From a perspective committed to the Bible as the inerrant Word of God," the biweekly glossy World(November 15/22) asks at almost issue-length what went wrong with the Republicans in the recent elections. To the editors' credit, they do not spend mu...
November 24, 2008
Ten Commandments versus Seven Aphorisms — Martin E. Marty
After the year of campaign-bred obsession with the Executive and Legislative branches of the federal government, the Judicial bade for attention this week in ways that Sightings cannot fail to see or choose to neglect. "Justices Grapple..," began a ...
November 17, 2008
Base Rebuilding — Martin E. Marty
If you trust the blunt instrument of exit polls, you will have followed up after the presidential election by reading somewhat contradictory observations by experienced columnists. To put an old cliché to work, Naomi Schaefer Riley in the November 7...